Today, rising customer expectations along with growing program complexity make it more challenging for Aerospace and Defence organizations to compete. Systems are increasingly becoming complex to design, develop and deliver, requiring a new way to ideate, prototype, manufacture, test, certify and sustain new air and space technologies.
“Making India Atmanirbhar or self-reliant is the vision of a new India that focuses on developing robust local supply chains by imposing import restrictions and offering production linked incentives (PLI),” Ravikiran Pothukuchi, Sales Director, Dassault Systemes, India.
Adding, “PLI scheme was announced by the government with the aim to offer companies incentives on incremental sales from products manufactured in domestic units. The scheme aims to propel India as a competitive player across markets globally and boost domestic manufacturing and exports. While Make in India focussed on local manufacturing for global markets, the subtle difference brought forth by Atmanirbhar Bharat with focus on local supply chains continues to have a profound impact on India’s manufacturing sector.
Ravikiran Pothukuchi, Sales Director, Dassault Systemes, India, shares details of the company’s plans for India with Huma Siddiqui.
Following are excerpts:
How can India’s national security industry prioritise indigenous and green technologies?
We at Dassault Systèmes conceived an idea called “Digital Trial Rooms” that we believe shall revolutionize the micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) in security infra manufacturing. The idea behind “Digital Trial Rooms” is simple; we aim to create a common shared digital technology infrastructure within the industrial corridors, as a joint investment with the State/Central government. This “common shared infrastructure model,” is essentially an innovation centre where digital technologies are hosted by the government and Dassault Systèmes. MSMEs can access the digital technologies to not only validate the production plans, plant layouts, quality plans virtually but also experiment with new methods of manufacturing (Additive Manufacturing/ 3D Printing) and new environmentally sustainable raw materials. Additionally, subsidized access to these “Digital Trial Rooms” will enable MSMEs to adopt such technologies at an affordable price while ensuring the coverage of operational expenses of such centres. We, therefore, believe that over a period of time, this will accelerate the adoption of digital technologies across MSMEs and make them world-class manufacturing hubs.
India has slowly begun to realize the impact of environmental degradation on the growth and development of the country. This has led to a significant shift in the mindset of entrepreneurs, businesses, and the government. Major developments around clean technology are paving the way for new business opportunities. There is an inevitable demand for green technology across all sectors including the national security industry.We are already in need of critical revival of the economy post-pandemic and the transition to a circular economy is the need of the hour.
A circular economy is one that pays equal importance to people, planet as well as profits, while also highlighting the transition to renewable resources, promoting an increasingly pragmatic way of producing materials and products. By switching to alternate sources of energy like wind, solar, and biomass, our dependence on non-renewable resources will be significantly reduced. By adopting environmentally-aware green manufacturing processes, India can be in a win-win situation both in terms of environmental sustainability and economic development.
Recently, Dassault Systèmes signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Tamil Nadu Industrial Development Corporation (TIDCO) to establish The Tamil Nadu Center of Advance Manufacturing (TANCAM) at the TIDEL Park, Chennai. It is a first of its kind CoE in India, offering a dedicated IT engineering ecosystem to support the MSME sector, startups and students across the state, and enable the growth of industries such as aerospace, defense, automotive and electric vehicles.
Electric aircraft technology is emerging as a solution to tackle some of the biggest environmental challenges that our society is currently facing. Much cheaper and expendable than any traditional aircraft carrying crew, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), also known as drones, allow faster remote access to a location without compromising human safety.India-based unmanned aerial systems (UAS) developer General Aeronautics is leveraging cutting-edge technology to help tackle some of the country’s most pressing issues. By leveraging Dassault Systèmes, 3DEXPERIENCE platform, the company has cloud-based access to digital design and simulation applications in a single, secure environment that offers quick and easy deployment. A standardized design and product development approach on the 3DEXPERIENCE platform reduces design iterations significantly, allowing faster convergence and significantly speeding up time to market.
What role will digital transformation play in managing the development of new goods and technology for this sector?
As businesses compete in the real world, they also compete in the virtual world. In the present context, the virtual world extends and improves the real world. So, the potential of virtual technology seems endless when it is already making visible differences across industries. With digital transformation, organizations would be able to explore infinite possibilities at scale in the virtual world before beginning the actual manufacturing process. This helps promote the practice of producing right in the first time, thereby reducing scrap and unnecessary wastage. The adoption of right manufacturing techniques and methods can lower environmental impact and carbon footprint significantly for an organization.
All that said the adoption of digital renderings has been majorly ad hoc and distributed across an organization. Often design, manufacturing, production planning, and MRO frequently operate independently in “silos” within an organization. However, if this data is collated and expanded to facilitate overall process simulation of an actual manufacturing process, this could open a world of possibilities for large manufacturing processes. This is what we know as the Digital Twin.
At Dassault Systèmes, we go beyond the digital twin with the Virtual Twin Experience. The Virtual Twin Experience is not only the virtual model of the production process; it is connected to the plant in real-time. Virtual Twin Experience is an executable virtual model of an actual system that brings in learning and experiences drawn from real processes to update the digital twin model. Achieving this closed-loop capability is in its true sense the optimum realization of benefits that can be gained from the convergence of the virtual and real worlds.
This can help in the validation and adoption of new material models that are recyclable and thereby contribute to the vision of a circular economy that we discussed earlier. Digital Transformation is critical, more so in today’s India, as there is no UNDO in the real world.
Where is the defence sector on the Digital Readiness curve?
The lifeblood of India’s manufacturing sector is its MSMEs, and one of the key aspects for their transformation is their digital readiness. MSMEs in India account for around 33% of the manufacturing output and over 45% of exports, across sectors such as textile, electrical equipment, food processing, and chemical. Digital technologies that help bring production efficiencies, quality improvements, and regulatory adherence are no longer “nice to have” but “must-have,” to be reckoned as a force in this sector.
Unfortunately, the adoption of digital technologies has mostly been limited to large original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and the MSMEs that have adopted this are few. There could be many reasons for such limited adoption, such as the willingness to adopt these technologies and affordability to access such technologies. Digital readiness to us is one of the critical success factors of MSMEs as well as the manufacturing sector as a whole. With accelerated investment in foundational digital technologies such as IoT, Cloud, AI, 3D simulation, the Indian manufacturing sector has started pivoting to digitalization.
India is on the way to becoming self-reliant. How have the initiatives of the government-supported this?
The vision of a self-reliant India is based on five pillars; economy, system, vibrant demography, infrastructure, and demand. Such initiatives are playing a critical role by focusing on certain specific sectors and promoting locally made products to minimize imports as much as possible. Some of the prominent sectors that are currently being targeted by these government initiatives are Electronics, Pharma, and labour-intensive industries.
